An Imperial Presidency’s ‘Prerogative’

Review by Bill Doughty

Some of America’s greatest presidents have assumed emergency powers during crises. Jefferson took the law into his own hands when he ordered the arrest of Aaron Burr for treason. Lincoln blockaded ships of the Confederacy and employed exceptional powers in the Civil War. FDR assumed extraordinary powers as Commander in Chief Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt

They acted on “presidential prerogative,” a right to act temporarily outside of the Constitution as justified in times of emergency or extraordinary imminent threat to the nation.

But, like George Washington before them, they worked with Congress and followed constraints of the courts. In his farewell address, Washington rejected “change by usurpation; for through this, in one instance, may the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” Washington famously turned down calls to serve as president beyond his two terms.

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. examines the history of the tension between the executive and the other co-equal branches of government in “The Imperial Presidency” (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973). Despite being written more than half a century ago, this remarkable book is relevant in 2026 in the era of “No Kings” protests. In fact, as we show, Schlesinger predicted what the United States is now experiencing –– 50 years after his book was published.

President John F. Kennedy and historian/advisor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Schlesinger, an advisor to JFK, was an advocate for a strong forward-thinking executive as essential to a healthy democracy. But in The Imperial Presidency –– published near the end of the Vietnam War, the Nixon presidency, and Watergate scandal –– he warns of the expansion of presidential power leading to dangerous abuse of the office.

His book and conclusions especially resonate in a topsy-turvy week –– as the current president and his administration go after a former FBI director for posting a picture of seashells, attack a comedian for telling a joke, justify tearing down part of the White House to build a ballroom, and try to manage a war of choice that is causing massive damage to the world's economy..

Years later Schlesinger also criticized George Bush’s ill-conceived “needless war” in Iraq, calling Bush an “imperial president.”

Marines marching prisoners in Iraq in 2003.

Commitment to the Constitution

Key to the success of American democracy, Schlesinger contends, is respect for and commitment to separation of powers as outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

“The American Constitution was established, for better or worse, on an idea new to the world in the eighteenth century and still uncommon in the twentieth century –– the idea of the separation of powers. This forbidding phrase represented a distinctive American contribution to the art of government. There had been no such doctrine in medieval times. Before the eighteenth century, everyone assumed that government required the unification of authority. But the Founding Fathers, who saw conflict as the guarantee of freedom, grandly defied the inherited wisdom. Instead of concentrating authority in a single institution, they chose to disperse authority among three independent branches of government, equipping the leaders of each, in the words of the 51st Federalist Paper, with the ‘necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.’ These branches, as every schoolchild used to know, were the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. The Constitution thus institutionalized conflict in the very heart of the American polity.

The question has always remained –– and has provided a central theme of American political history –– how a government based on the separation of powers could be made to work.”

Using events in American history, Schlesinger examines how a balance of power without checks on that power can create “inertia” that allows a president to become a corrupt autocrat. He shows how the executive branch can then manipulate fear, hate, religion, and emergencies such as war to breach the Constitution.

Schlesinger writes this:

“This book consequently devotes special attention to the history of the war-making power. The assumption of that power by the Presidency was gradual and usually under the demand or pretext of emergency. It was as much a matter of congressional abdication as of presidential usurpation. As it took place, there dwindled away checks, both written and unwritten, that had long held the Presidency under control. The written checks were in the Constitution. The unwritten checks were in the forces and institutions a President once had to take into practical account before he made decisions of war and peace –– the cabinet and the executive branch itself, the Congress, the judiciary, the press, public opinion at home and the opinion of the world. By the early 1970s the American President had become on issues of war and peace the most absolute monarch (with the possible exception of Mao Tse-tung of China) among the great powers of the world.

The Indochina War placed this problem high on the national consciousness. But the end of American military involvement in Southeast Asia would not extinguish the problem. The assertions of sweeping and unilateral presidential authority remained official doctrine in foreign affairs. And, if the President were conceded these life-and-death decisions abroad, how could he be restrained from gathering unto himself the less fateful powers of the national polity? For the claims of unilateral authority in foreign policy soon began to pervade and embolden the domestic Presidency. ‘Perhaps it is a universal truth,’ Madison had written Jefferson, ‘that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.’ The all-purpose invocation of 'national security,' the insistence on executive secrecy, the withholding of information from Congress, the refusal to spend funds appropriated by congress, the attempted intimidation of the press, the use of the White House itself as a base for espionage and sabotage directed against the political opposition –– all signified the extension of the imperial Presidency from foreign to domestic affairs. Underneath such developments there could be discerned a revolutionary challenge to the separation of powers itself.”

Schlesinger continues:

“This book is written out of a double concern. The first concern is that the pivotal institution of the American government, the Presidency, has got out of control and badly needs new definition and restraint. The second concern is that revulsion against inordinate theories of presidential power may produce an inordinate swing against the Presidency and thereby do essential damage to our national capacity to handle the problems of the future. The answer to the runaway Presidency is not the messenger-boy Presidency. The American democracy must discover a middle ground between making the President a czar and making him a puppet. The problem is to devise means of reconciling a strong and purposeful Presidency with equally strong and purposeful forms of democratic control. Or, to put it succinctly, we need a strong Presidency — but a strong Presidency within the Constitution.”

The solution is to find a balance between a strong executive and strong guardrails of, by, and for the people. Schlesinger examines the yin-yang relationship between the executive and legislative branches within the context of the War Powers Act and how the military is used or abused.

[Of note, England’s King Charles spoke to a joint session of Congress yesterday in this “No Kings” era and 250th commemoration of the birth of the United States. Charles praised the prowess of the American military. And he gently rebuked those who are against NATO, who oppose support for Ukraine, who only look "inward," who refuse to recognize climate change, and who want an imbalance of power without checks and balances. He did not mention directly the hundreds of women who were victims of Epstein, Maxwell and friends (including Charles’s brother Andrew).]

Corruption and Tyranny

Near the end of The Imperial Presidency, Schlesinger makes the provocative statement that “Watergate was potentially the best thing to have happened to the Presidency in a long time.”

Facing certain impeachment, Nixon was forced to resign the presidency. His associates were jailed and humiliated. But accountability and lessons-learned sometimes do not last forever.

Here’s Schlesinger's astounding prediction from 50 years ago:

“We have noted that corruption appears to visit the White House in fifty-year cycles. This suggests that exposure and retribution inoculate the Presidency against its latent criminal impulses for about half a century. Around the year 2023 the American people would be well advised to go on the alert and start nailing down everything in sight.

A constitutional Presidency, as the great Presidents had shown, could be a very strong Presidency indeed. But what kept a strong President constitutional, in addition to checks and balances incorporated within his own breast, was the vigilance of the nation. Neither impeachment nor repentance would make much difference if the people themselves had come to an unconscious acceptance of the imperial Presidency. The Constitution could not hold the nation to ideals it was determined to betray. The reinvigoration of the written checks in the American Constitution depended on the reinvigoration of the unwritten checks in American society. The great institutions — Congress, the courts, the executive establishment, the press, the universities, public opinion — had to reclaim their own dignity and meet their own responsibilities. As Madison said long ago, the country could not trust to "parchment barriers" to halt the encroaching spirit of power. In the end, the Constitution would live only if it embodied the spirit of the American people.”

The presidency has some prerogatives in times of crisis. But in the American democracy, Congress has the prerogative to impeach the president, fund the government, and declare war. Under the Constitution, the media (and comedians) have the prerogative and right to free expression. And the people have the ultimate prerogative through their voice and vote –– as long as voting is not corrupted by an imperial presidency.

“Unless the American democracy figures out how to control the Presidency in war and peace without enfeebling the Presidency across the board, then our system of government will face grave troubles,” Schlesinger warns.

The Imperial Presidency concludes with a quote from Walt Whitman:

“"There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, –– and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance –– Tyranny may always enter –– there is no charm, no bar against it –– the only bar against it is a large resolute breed of men [and women].”

Civility ‘By George’

Review by Bill Doughty

In his first Easter address today Pope Leo XIV said this, in part: “Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them!”

In one of President Trump's messages issued on Easter Sunday, after threatening to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age,” Trump said: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”*

George Washington would not have approved of Trump’s message.

First Commander in Chief George Washington lived by a code of manners, habits, and values. His 110 rules may seem quaint by today’s standards, but many of his words of wisdom –– which originally came from a French Jesuit book of etiquette –– resonate powerfully hundreds of years later, especially when we compare his code of conduct with that of the current CINC.

Washington’s rules are examined in “By George!: Mr. Washington’s Guide to Civility Today” by Steven Michael Selzer (Andrews McMeer Publishing 2000).

Selzer wrote this small book more than 20 years before Trump dared to compare himself as a better president than Abraham Lincoln or George Washington.

Selzer observed cracks in society at the turn of the millennium with plenty of symptoms of incivility, hate speech, and meanness. He writes:

“Rudeness. Crudeness. Thoughtlessness. Uncivilized behavior is everywhere. From the boss who publicly chews out her assistant, to the driver who barrels dangerously down the highway, to the sports fan who yells obscenities at the ball game, there is little doubt that we live in an increasingly barbaric world. And it's just as clear that many of us would like to see things change.

Polls indicate that a great many Americans long for greater civility because the way we treat one another has a powerful impact on our daily life. Civility in this context goes beyond good manners. It means behaving honorably and ethically in all aspects of our lives.

The problem is we just don't know how to behave anymore. On the one hand we're taught to be forthright and assertive in our interactions, while on the other hand there is an expectation that we will be extremely polite — even passive –– when faced with a problem or conflict. The mixed messages are confusing and misleading. What Americans need is a model of civility, one we can look to for insight and inspiration.”

Washington copied the 110 rules down at age fourteen and kept them as his model for good and honorable behavior.

Many of the rules apply to a different time in history –– an 18th century era of castes, chauvinism, and codes for dress, table manners, and body language. For example, Rule 2 says, basically, “watch where you scratch;” Rule 9 admonishes, loosely, “don’t spit in the fire;” Rule 13 advises, literally, “Kill no vermin, as fleas, lice, ticks, etc., in the sight of others;” and Rule 100 tells diners, “Cleanse not your teeth with the tablecloth, napkin, fork, or knife.”

Washington's wording sometimes comes across as old-fashioned and stilted, but Selzer helps translate and contextualize the insights along the way.

Many of the 110 rules stand out as golden rule common sense advice, which is especially relevant 250 years after the birth of the United States. There is some redundancy and a scolding tone, but there are also some gems that reach across the years:

Rule 1: “Every action done in company ought to be done with some sign of respect to those that are present.” Show some respect, including to the legislature, judiciary, and media!

Rule 6: “Sleep not when others speak, sit not when others stand, speak not when you should hold your peace.” Wake up even if you’re not “woke.”

Rule 21: “Reproach none for the infirmities of nature, not delight them that have have them in mind.” Don’t make fun of disabilities.

Rule 22: “Shew not yourself glad at the misfortune of another, though he were your enemy.” Speak only good things about those who pass away –– or say nothing at all.

Rule 25: “Superfluous compliments and all affectation of ceremony are to be avoided.” Be careful about commenting on the appearance of others or in wrapping yourself in the flag.

Rule 26: “Remove your hat to persons of distinction … make a reverence…” Especially during dignified transfers of the remains of service members who die in wars you start. It’s common sense.

In a speech to the citizens of Baltimore on April 17, 1789, Washington said, “It appears to me that little more than common sense and common honesty, in the transaction of the community at large, would be necessary to make us a great and happy nation.”

Rule 35: “Let your discourse with men of business be short and comprehensive.” Selzer expounds: “Be short and comprehensive in speech. It is inconsiderate to waste the time of others.” Ramble not.

Rule 36: (Translates to) Remain humble and treat everyone equally. “…Treat them with affability and courtesy, without arrogancy.”

Rule 47: “Mock not nor jest at anything of importance, break no jests that are sharp and biting..” Imagine George’s and the other founders’ horror at some of the AI generated memes and vitriolic social media texts by the current White House.

Rule 49: “Use no reproachful language against anyone, neither curse nor revile.” [*For example, Trump’s Easter post to Iran.]

Selzer notes, “Profanity demeans us, not those against whom we use it. And it usually backfires.”

Rule 50: “Be not hasty to believe flying reports to the disparagement of any.” Ignore gossip and rumors –– and conspiracies such as Big Lies and distorted statistics.

Rule 56: “Associate yourself with men of good quality …” Consider Trump’s second administration, which included Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi and still includes (for now) Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, and Pete Hegseth. His first choice for Attorney General was Matt Gaetz.

Rule 58: “Let your conversation be without malice or envy as a sign of a commendable nature.”

Rule 59: “Never express anything unbecoming nor act against the moral rules…”

Rule 61: “Utter not base and frivolous things among grave and learned men…”

Rule 63: “A man ought not to value himself of his achievements or rare qualities of wit, much less of his riches, virtue, or kindred.” How many presidents railed publicly about not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize or bragged about their wealth and self-proclaimed virtues?

Rule 76: “While you are talking, point not with your finger at him of whom you discourse, nor approach too near to him to whom you talk, especially to his face.” Including members of the press.

Rule 82: “Undertake not what you cannot perform but be careful to keep your promise.” If you promise to lower prices, release all the Epstein files, and not start a war it’s important to keep your promises.

Selzer adds, “A promise is to keep. Trust is based on performing on your promises. You should always be there when it counts. People rely on you, and you should be willing to make a personal sacrifice to meet your commitments.”

Public office should not be a means for self-enrichment and profiteering. Selzer notes that during the eight years General Washington fought the Revolutionary War, he spent only three days of respite at his Mount Vernon home. “To keep a promise, George Washington believed in sacrifice –– he lost half his net worth during the Revolutionary War.”

Rule 88: “Be not tedious in discourse, make not many digressions, nor repeat often the same manner of discourse.” Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Rule 89: “Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust.” Selzer adds, “Fairness is basic to our entire social system.” And, “If ever there was a golden opportunity to exercise the golden rule, this is it.”

Rule 110: “Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.” If you have a conscience.

Washington’s final rule focuses on conscience as the ultimate guide toward civility. He frowned on hubris, self-importance, and dishonest behavior. Instead, he sought to follow his conscience toward humility, kindness, respect, tolerance, restraint and empathy. Civility

George Washington lived core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment.

One of his namesakes, USS George Washington (CVN 73), is part of the Forward-Deployed Naval Forces and calls Yokosuka, Japan, its current home.

Hegseth’s Holy War

By Bill Doughty

On March 25 at the Pentagon “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth prayed “in the name of Jesus” for God to help break the teeth of his enemies in Iran.

His prayer, written in part by a military chaplain, calls up ghosts of the Crusades, Manifest Destiny, and Old Testament brutality as well as an interpretation of the New Testament that is violent and unforgiving.

Hegseth called on the Christian God to give “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

“Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle. You, who stirred the nations of the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell. [“Nations of the North against Babylon of old” = Crusades]

“Behold now, the wicked who rise against Your justice and the peace of the righteous. Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly.

By the blast of Your anger, let the evil perish. Let their bulls go down to slaughter, for their day has come… 

"Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things, and blow them away like chaff before the wind. Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence. Surround them as a shield. Protect the innocent and blameless in their midst. Make their arrows like those of a skilled warrior who returned empty-handed. Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.”

[“Riighteousness…great nation = Manifest destiny]

“Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy. Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve, and let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse, that evil may be driven back and wicked souls be delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them. For the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.”

[Overwhelming violence…without remorse…eternal damnation = Old Testament.

“We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ, king over all kings.”

Hegseth’s apocalyptic vision frames the war with Iran as a struggle against "religious fanatics" seeking a "religious Armageddon.”

As George W. Bush did in his war with Iraq, Hegseth also characterizes Operation Epic Fury as a "crusade" and a "holy war.” Theocracy is embraced on a path toward "end times."

Framing Jesus Christ as “king over all kings” seems to place Christianity above the Constitution, with “under God” supplanting “e pluribus unum.” It is a turn away from secular democracy and toward dominion domination.

Considering the pattern of discrimination against secular humanism and diversity, equity and Inclusion –– such as raising the profile of Christian military chaplains and preventing the promotion of blacks and women in senior officer ranks –– Hegseth’s prayer and war strategy seem to align with white Christian supremacy.

During his Pentagon prayer service, he welcomed another member of the Trump cabinet, Veterans Administration head Doug Collins, an Air Force reserve chaplain. “It’s such a blessing to be a part of a cabinet filled with faith-filled members who pray together, who share scripture together on a regular basis, who meet together and pray together,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth’s pastor, Doug Wilson, spoke and prayed at a previous Pentagon service. Wilson opposes gay marriage, supports women not voting, and promotes past slavery as good for black people.

Regarding slavery, Wilson says that the Bible does not explicitly forbid slavery and permits owning other people if slaves are treated well. He co-authored “Southern Slavery as it Was,” which claimed that American slavery preserved families and introduced black families to Christianity.

Hundreds of Christian leaders, joined by other religious and nonreligious groups, have condemned white Christian nationalism and supremacy and Hegseth’s view of patriarchy and dominionism. Many express their opposition in ongoing “No Kings” rallies and protests.

After Hegseth’s prayer for violence, Pope Leo addressed Catholic worshippers during a Palm Sunday mass in St Peter’s Square. Leo said the conflict between Iran, Israel and the US was “atrocious” and that Jesus could not be used to justify war.

“This is our God: Jesus, king of peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” he said to tens of thousands of followers. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

Quoting a Bible passage, Leo added: “‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’”